China Creates App To Tell You If You're Near Someone In Debt, Encourages You To Report Them (techspot.com) 153
The Chinese government has developed a mobile app that tells users if they are near someone who is in debt. The app, called a "map of deadbeat debtors," flashes when the user is within 500 meters of a debtor and displays that person's exact location. TechSpot reports: News of the app has caused quite a bit of controversy after it was originally reported by the state-run China Daily. It is an extension to China's existing "social credit" system which scores people based on how they act in public. The app is available through the WeChat platform which has become immensely popular in China. The government stated that "Deadbeat debtors in North China's Hebei province will find it more difficult to abscond as the Higher People's Court of Hebei on Monday introduced" the app. Once a user is alerted that they are close to a debtor, the user can then view their personal information. This will reveal their name, national ID number, and why they were added to the debtor list. The debtor can then be publicly shamed or reported to the authorities if it is deemed that they are capable of repaying their debts.
Controvercy IN CHINA? (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be very interesting to know what Chinese thought about this.
(We already know what we think about it. Outside the USA it is terrible, inside the USA with the privately run credit agencies it is just business as normal.)
But seriously, does anyone have any feedback upon what the Chinese themselves think about this sort of thing?
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It would be very interesting to know what Chinese thought about this.
(We already know what we think about it. Outside the USA it is terrible, inside the USA with the privately run credit agencies it is just business as normal.)
But seriously, does anyone have any feedback upon what the Chinese themselves think about this sort of thing?
China thinks about 1.4 billion different things.
Anyone who says differently is either an idiot or a government.
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Just my two cents..No one really uses that app. The app is not for tracking people who are in debt. It's only for publicly shaming wealthy tax fraudsters and deadbeats. But some media just like to spin it differently(use "someone in debt" instead of "deadbeats") and relate it to the social credit system.
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Re:Controvercy IN CHINA? (Score:5, Insightful)
The tyranny of absolute safety is hardly safety at all...or worth living for.
If you have nothing bad, why you want to hide.
The problem is that 'bad' constitutes different things to different people. A society with no privacy is a perpetual witchhunt against those who dare to think differently. Such societies rot from the inside.
Chinese pick security.
Chinese also choose to run over students with tanks, or disappear people who practice peaceful religions.
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Congratulations, you're 'bad' and mob justice will be turned against you. In fact, your mob attack performance may be monitored as well so you better go after anyone identified as it could be a test to see if you're next.
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China has a problem with lots of low level corruption and fraud and the Chinese are getting pretty sick of it and demanding a crack down. From outside it looks excessive, from inside those not involved in corruption and fraud want it and as often is the case in China, regulation looks good but in reality is often corrupted. Problem with this system should be obvious, paying a bribe to get your name removed and of course revenge paying a bribe to get someone put on and inevitably American espionage agents ha
Re:Controvercy IN CHINA? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have nothing bad, why you want to hide.
What "not bad" today may be "bad" tomorrow, maybe something innocuous that YOU do. And whose definition of "bad" are we using, anyway? Yours? Mine? The Chinese government's?
Chinese pick security.
Chinese pick totalitarianism. No thanks. It's bad enough in the US, we don't need petty bureaucrats second-guessing everything we do. Hey, is someone at your door, humaniverse? Were you watching something bad on the internet?
Re: Controvercy IN CHINA? (Score:1)
Who determines what is bad? Historically most crimes against humanity occur when leadership start choosing what is bad. Due process and free speech were the results of governments who did a lot of bad themselves.
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They think whatever Glorious Leader Xi Jinping tells them to.
Re: Controvercy IN CHINA? (Score:2)
They think whatever the government tells them to think about it.
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Another one? (Score:5, Informative)
Dupe [slashdot.org]
Re:Another one? (Score:5, Funny)
BeauHD needs an app to tell him when he's within 500ft of a dupe.
Welcome to social credit Communist style (Score:2)
That national ID number follows a person around.
Need a smart phone? Thats a national ID number linked service.
Add in any court issues, debts.
What kind of information a person posted online.
Get that score too low and the ability to domestic transport gets removed. No flying. No fast train service. No good hotels.
No good education options for anyone connected in anyway to the low score person. No government work.
Anyone can report a person. Its not ju
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And how is this different from a "capitalist" social credit system? because loans to individuals are a pretty capitalistic part of the Chinese experience.
I mean, China in general has a lot of captialistic tendencies, and where they deviate it's more "can be taken by high ranking government official cause they want it" than "communist". Although they seem good about letting you keep the cash as long as you remember to listen to the state on privacy/power/etc.
Twice this week (Score:3)
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in Soviet? China, the phone turns you off
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i just don't know any more, and i am apparently too old to care.
Why not have the app report the debtor directly? (Score:2)
I don't get it. Have an app tell a stranger to report some guy half a kilometer away? Why not have the app just report directly to whoever the stranger is supposed to report to?
Re:Why not have the app report the debtor directly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not have the app report the debtor directly (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the real reason for this -- to keep those not in power fighting each other, rather than looking upwards. It also happens in the west (just via different mechanisms).
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As it says in the summary, the primary purpose of telling you is so that you can shame them when they walk by. And it also gives you some information about them and their debt, and you can report them if it appears they could pay it.
The goal is to cause people with debt to get in trouble for any conspicuous consumption they engage in.
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The goal is to cause people with debt to get in trouble for any conspicuous consumption they engage in.
No it isn't. The goal is to turn the population on each other. Didn't anyone read 1984?
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Like 3 people in China read that book.
The fact that your "understanding" simply substitutes a western political trope shows the depth of you "understanding."
You should really look into the Chinese culture of societal unity if you think that is going to be the result. It isn't even on the table.
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Like 3 people in China read that book.
The fact that your "understanding" simply substitutes a western political trope shows the depth of you "understanding."
You should really look into the Chinese culture of societal unity if you think that is going to be the result. It isn't even on the table.
The number of people in China who have read that book is irrelevant to the goals of the state. Likewise, the "Chinese culture of societal unity" is irrelevant if individuals are persecuted for disagreeing.
Claiming that everyone agrees $FOO is a good idea is stupid when anyone who disagrees is punished. You can't use their lack of objections as evidence of their support when said objections would get them executed.
Also, what's the difference between the chinese "culture of societal unity" (which is based on
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If other westerners weren't already using the book as reference point, referring to it would have no value.
And the details of the story examine the problems with governance in the western world; it isn't a history book that you can take some sort of deeper lesson out of. It is fiction, that is only useful for understanding real events in a very narrow, context-dependent way.
Using it for China is totally worthless; it wouldn't be a realistic story if it was set in China. Nobody would use it as an example, be
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And the details of the story examine the problems with governance in the western world;
I see you haven't read the book. It isn't about governance, in much the same way that Romeo and Juliet wasn't about poison.
The book was about showing the end result when citizens self-censor to avoid persecution. In this regard, it is spot on relevant to China today.
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Shame them how? It's now legal in China to verbally and/or physically abuse someone the app says is a debtor?
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It was always legal in China to shame people you catch violating social norms, WTF are you going on about?
"Verbal abuse" would be if they know they were declared shameful by the bank, but they deny it when you wag your finger at them.
This makes no sense (Score:2)
The proximity has to be determined by a central server. Hence the app-operators already know where everyone in debt is. The police would just need to ask for the data. Hence I conclude this is for people that the police is _not_ interested in. The only rationale I can see is instilling a sense of being hunted by fellow citizens. You know, the general sense of everybody being out to denunciate everybody that the fascists and stalinists used so much to keep "order".
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10-4 good citizen, next step, put them in ghettos
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The app knows who they are, where they are, and how much they owe, but it doesn't know if they're pushing around a cart full of chickens and paying in chickens to avoid a paper trail.
That's your job, Citizen!
Re:This makes no sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah, it's because Chinese personal bankruptcy laws are pathetically weak. There are people who either rack up debt they can't pay, or just don't pay debts when they're capable of it. If an individual debt is below a certain level, it's very hard to sue the debtor, and with the weak bankruptcy laws you can't get their assets liquidated and/or restrict them from running a business. Fixing or improving the laws for better protection against deadbeat debtors would be hard, because the Chinese government isn't a coherent unit, it's a massive bureaucracy that barely functions. Making this app to try and shame people into servicing their debts and/or get people to avoid doing business with them is far easier.
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Thanks. That does make sense.
China.. (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, the Chinese government has developed a mobile app that tells users if they are near someone who has submitted a dupe. The app, called a "map of deadbeat duplicators," flashes when the user is within 500 meters of a duplicator and displays that person's exact location.
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If it ever happens, I guess we're supposed to try to shame them.
I don't think it would work in my country. Nobody feels any shame.
I debt or... (Score:2)
In any case I still think it's a disgusting idea.
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Behind/defaulting. It's in the summary, no need to even go to the article.
Slashdot editors create app to detect dupes (Score:3)
Turn it OFF...! (Score:1)
mandatory ? (Score:2)
Will citizens be required to download this app?
Will the debtor's phone be continually pointing at him/her and squawking that he/she is a deadbeat? Will his/her family be shamed as well?
The term 'deadbeat' reminds me of a few (many) years back when 'deadbeat dads', who had failed to pay their child support, got their pictures in local newspapers. Similarly, some newspapers published pictures of 'johns' who patronized local prostitutes. Shaming was popular then. Musta been illegal, they don't do it now.
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Will his/her family be shamed as well?
Only if they're ever seen in public together.
we should do this in the USA (Score:4, Funny)
I can't be the only one who didn't think this: (Score:2)
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Well, The Orville episodes are deliberately social commentary. That episode was clearly inspired by China's new social credit system as well as the US latest propensity to treat popular opinion as facts.
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There's also a black mirror episode - Nosedive. And maybe one from Sliders too.
"China Social Credit System" stories are mostly BS (Score:4, Informative)
There are a number of articles pointing out that the coverage of this stuff is full of holes. Here's the actual article:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a... [chinadaily.com.cn]
"Deadbeat debtors in North China's Hebei province will find it more difficult to abscond as the Higher People's Court of Hebei on Monday introduced a mini-program on WeChat targeting them. Called "a map of deadbeat debtors", the program allows users to find out whether there are any debtors within 500 meters."
First, this is a initiative by a local province, not "China". Second, it involves those who have defaulted on actual physical loans, and is completely unrelated to the "social credit" concept that the Chinese government is talking about. Additionally, many other things that are supposedly part of the social credit system, and reported as such in the West are actually privately designed and run things on Chinese social media sites run by Ali Baba and the like, and not actually ideas related to the social credit concept. (example: the thing where if you play a lot of MMOs you get rated lower on the dating apps: none of that has any connection to the Chinese government. The social media that collects the data and the dating app are both privately designed and run systems. It's like blaming the Feds for Facebook algorithms). Basically, 99% of the things that get reported as being part of the social credit concept aren't in fact part of anything run by the federal government in China. This is just a very poor l
While there are definitely questions to be answered, nobody is being well-informed about the issues if we keep getting bombarded with completely unconnected things and being told that they are "THE social credit system". The actual system proposal, from what I've read is was better translated as a "social trust system" in China since fraud is rampant and trust in local/federal government officials and private companies is rock bottom. The biggest penalties such as being blocked from luxury hotels and first-class flight were in fact proposed for company executives of companies that have breached the social credit system. The real story here, lost in the BS, is that China desperately wants to create a "trust culture" where people have faith in not only each other but government and companies. that basic trust is highly lacking, and that's really what this is all about. Doing business in China is much harder that it needs to be, because rampant fraud has led to a lack of trust. The *actual* social credit program seems more about creating a core of "trusted" entities, both public and private institutions.
Maybe the social credit ideas are completely misguided and the actual system will end up being abused and failing completely, but it really serves no purpose to get fed blatantly false headlines conflating unrelated things with the actual Chinese federal government's plans.
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Note: I missed mentioning this part because of an edit: but the original 2014 white paper in China about creating the system noted 4 categories of entities it would apply to. (1) government agencies / local governments (2) private corporations (3) courts and judicial and (4) individuals. All of these types of entities are supposed to be rated by those who interact with them. This is important context that you ideally should have if you want to make your own mind up about what the intent here is all about.
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Here's the source on that. Here's the "scare version" in the Western media:
https://www.gamesradar.com/min... [gamesradar.com]
"Chinese gamers face direct ‘social penalties’, such as lack of access to Visa schemes and dating sites ... Buying games could potentially lower your ‘social credit’ in China by 2020 if a new government scheme gains traction. The Black Mirror style trial scheme discourages certain types of behaviour and can even penalise people for buying video games."
As much as I don't like th
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Note: "Sesame Credit" is the source of many of the details on these "social credit" stories.
The thing is, a "Sesame Credit" score on their platform is in no respect more "Orwellian" than whatever secret tracking Facebook, Google and Twitter and all other social media regularly do. which is actually better?
1) To be *explicitly* track and rated, in a system with clearly-defined rules.
2) To be *secretly* tracked and rated, but we pretend it's not happening and won't tell you the rules
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Sorry I don't have a reference, but I think I saw an article about the problem of trust in different European economies, for example Italy versus Britain, where Italy suffers because of a general lack of trust which slows down business.
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It's incorrect and naive to argue that these "privately developed" features of social credit are not government directed in China. They are. China has a different economic system and different governmental system than you're used to thinking about.
Go back a few decades and everything in China was explicitly owned by the government. Today, about 75% of companies and assets in China are owned by the government (US governments own less than 10% of total assets in the US). Any company acting against what the Ch
What the fuck? (Score:2)
This is horrifying. They want to create a social-pariah class and a surveillance society at the same time.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
I see no possible way this could turn ordinary broke people into murderhobos when confronted on a daily basis. What could possibly go wrong?
So no more mortgages and credit cards? (Score:2)
How does this work, surely not ALL debt triggers this?
The future! (Score:2)
Wow. Its Black Mirror happening right now...
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What if you could see the 2008 bankers that caused the crash around you?